Power driven wrenches find particularly desirable use in close spaces where the handle of a conventional wrench cannot turn far. A typical power driven wrench has a head with a rotatable, driven member inside, with the driving power coming from the opposite end of the wrench handle, as particularly illustrated in Tillman U.S. Pat. No. 4,362,072 and Frenkel U.S. Pat. No. 5,709,136.
Such wrenches are very useful, particularly in tight, constrained situations, or where a nut or bolt is very tightly retained, but power driven wrenches are obviously more expensive than simple, manual crescent wrenches or the like.
Accordingly, as indicated in the prior art, power driven wrenches may have a replaceable nut or bolt driver, so that the one power driven wrench may be used with a variety of nuts and bolts of different sizes. However, in the prior art, the nut driver unit is replaceable only with the removal of other parts of the power wrench head, followed by replacement of the nut driver, and reinstallation of the other parts of the wrench into their positions of use.
By this invention, as shown in my prior patent publication U.S. 2004-0118252A1, a powered wrench having a quick release nut or bolt driver is provided. Furthermore, the wrench of this invention is of narrower width than some of the prior art powered wrenches, which makes them useful in spaces which would be too narrow for some of the wrenches of the prior art.
Furthermore, it may be desirable to fit a powered wrench into a space which is even narrower, and thus not accessible to the powered wrenches of the above patent publication because of the length of the wrenches. Also, a shortened, powered wrench exhibits other advantages. It may be more easily carried, even in a pocket, and more easily stored in boxes and the like, with the wrench being operable by connection with a standard, stock-item rotary extension piece or shaft which is readily available in tool shops and hardware stores.